A Glimpse of the Future of Parking

Finding a parking spot is such a travail that Calvin Trillin once wrote a book about it. But with the debut this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas of a new navigation and parking service, such driver headaches could eventually go the way of the hitching post.

Inrix, which already delivers live traffic information to major car companies, including Ford, BMW, Audi and Toyota, for their in-dash navigation systems, is introducing Inrix Parking, live information on available parking spaces and prices that is sent directly to drivers. Until now, there were separate smartphone apps available, but Inrix is aggregating all this information on an international basis and integrating it with navigation and traffic information.

“The trouble with parking is that it’s a very fragmented market with a lot of independent operators and a lot of information that isn’t available on the Internet,” explained Scott Sedlik, vice president of product planning and market development at INRIX during a pre-CES briefing. So Inrix is partnering with two companies that collect parking information, ParkMe in North America and Parkopedia in Europe, to deliver up-to-date information on 18,000 parking facilities in North America and 42,000 in Europe.

In a demonstration, an on-screen map revealed roughly 1,700 parking lots in New York City, while in a car’s center console a couple of nearby alternatives appeared along with distance and pricing information. Drivers will be able to filter results according to preferences of proximity or price. Mark Pendergrast, a senior product manager at Inrix, said the percentage of lots covered would vary from city to city, but in Manhattan, he estimated that 60 percent of facilities were included.

Inrix Park will first appear built into Kenwood’s DVD entertainment car receivers, the Excelon DNN990HD and DNN770HD, which also offer local gas prices and live traffic warnings. Pricing for the in-dash receivers wasn’t announced, but because the parking information is a service that is sent wirelessly to cars, the parking data can also begin appearing in existing vehicles from Ford and Toyota this year without additional charges.

When combined with turn-by-turn directions, it’s hoped that such parking information could help save fuel, reduce traffic, and driver frustration, although this first version won’t be perfect. Many lot operators still resist sharing pricing and lot information for fear competitors will undercut them, Mr. Pendergrast said. And there are a wide variety of lot management systems in use, making it difficult to track the number of empty spaces precisely. There’s also the question of street parking, which the service will not initially include.

Systems for monitoring on-street parking are still evolving, Mr. Sedlik said. “But what’s more exciting is the payment component of on-street parking,” he said. In the not-too-distant future, you should be able to not only find a spot but also pay for it automatically from your car. No more searching for loose change. And when your time is about to expire, an app will sound a warning on your smartphone so that you can choose to move or add more money to the virtual meter from your seat in a restaurant.

Just as live traffic information has improved in accuracy and utility over the last few years, Mr. Sedlik expects parking information to become increasingly useful, including the option of reserving a space before you arrive and listing nearby electric vehicle charging stations. That could not only help relieve parking stress but also E.V. owners’ range anxiety.

A version of this article appears in print on 01/13/2013, on page AU4 of the NewYork edition with the headline: A Glimpse Into the Future of Parking.

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